#BizTrends2017: The top 100 emerging consumer trends

Sliced across 10 categories, each trend is delivered in digestible snapshots that explore how the trend is already showing up in consumer behavior today, signs that it’s growing more popular and an original analysis on why brands and marketers should be paying attention.

From trends such as Vagina-nomics and Artificial Nature to Tech vs. the Trolls and Halal Tourism, the Future 100 report foresees a 2017 full of new frontiers for consumers and new opportunities for brands.

The 10 lenses under which the trends are categorised are: Beauty, Brands & Marketing, Culture, Food & Drink, Health, Lifestyle, Luxury, Retail, Tech & Innovation, and Travel & Hospitality.

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Highlights include:

• Marijuana: The New Rosé? Today, women in the marijuana market are looking beyond remedies for menstrual pain. In fact, marijuana may be on its way to overtaking wine as the hip indulgence of choice.

• Second Skin: Much of the visible appearance of aging skin can be attributed to loss of elasticity. Researchers are uncovering new materials that create a “second skin” to restore natural tautness. Scientists at MIT and Harvard have created an invisible layer of polymers that produces dramatic results in initial tests.

• AI Art: There’s been plenty of talk of artificial intelligence replacing taxi drivers through self-driving cars, and even making white-collar professionals redundant – but will AI also replace artists?

• Trippy Travel: In past decades, countercultural types flocked to the coffee shops of Amsterdam to sample legal marijuana, but today’s aspiring psychonauts are traveling farther afield. In the past few years, tourism around ayahuasca, a potent psychoactive brew of vines and leaves used as traditional spiritual medicine among the indigenous residents of Amazonia, has exploded.

• Retail Naturalism: Technology brands are evolving retail concepts away from cold and minimal shops toward something friendlier and more natural.

Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the Innovation Group, said of the report: “Keeping up with shifts in the world today means keeping a pulse on what’s happening, and also anticipating what’s to come. So what makes the 2017 consumer tick? What would the 2017 horoscope for consumer behavior look like? We hope Future 100 offers brands, marketers and consumers alike the answers to those questions.”

Download the full report, including all 100 trends on jwtintelligence.com. The Innovation Group will also explore how last year’s trends played out in 2016 in a series of posts on the J. Walter Thompson Intelligence website.